1. hal is installed and working. 2. You are using a recent version of libmtp/libnjb for those devices. I've also worked with libkarma and libifp but have been unable to actually check them out to see how they're working since I don't have those devices. We're probably going to start a "send us your old media devices" thing going, so that I can work on all of them. libgpod was more hesitant about working with me, but there's a problem there anyways, as apparently you can't detect from the USB interface the iPod exposes what kind of iPod it actually is, without connecting to it. Feel free to blame Apple on this one, as it's probably on purpose in an attempt to keep you on iTunes. So there's a generic definition already in hal which should be (hopefully, pending testing, send me your old iPods) good enough to at least have it show up as an iPod. Once you click the connect button the library should be able to provide more info. 3. Your distribution's package of the device access libraries installs the hal fdi files provided by the libraries. For some unfathomable reason many (most?) don't -- even my beloved Gentoo. So start bugging your package maintainers early, because if you don't have these installed, you're not going to get autodetecting goodness. Some of these may end up in the main HAL distribution (I have repo access so can add them in) but for many it doesn't make sense as they're constantly being updated or changed, and it would require changing in two places instead of one. (Also, some libraries generate these automatically, instead of having a fixed file).

I don't know if these files are included by default in VL 6 with HAL but if they're not, could the devs take notice and include it in preparation for KDE4 compatibility?